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Computing Students Develop 'Bin There' Recycling App

Mon, 12/10/2012

This semester, a group of students in the College of Comuting worked with Tech's Office of Solid Waste Management and Recycling (OSWM&R) to develop a recycling app for Georgia Tech. Kyle Kukshtel, Madhura Bhave and Clay Garrett created “Bin There” as part of their senior design course Computing for Good.

Tell us about the project you are working on and what the goals are.

"Bin There" attempts to increase overall awareness of recycling across campus by challenging students to locate the recycling bins at Georgia Tech. Each time a user finds a bin and "tags" it via our app, he will gain points. Participants also earn points by answering recycling trivia questions. The goal is to hold a contest every semester where students try to get the highest score in the app by tagging the most bins.

Why did your team decide to work with the OSWM&R?

We all liked the idea of making an impact right here on campus. We knew that Tech was well recognized for its green initiatives and focus on sustainability, and being able to contribute to those types of initiatives really intrigued us. The solution we came up with was also derived from a relatively open-ended premise, so we got to engage many of the skills we learned at Tech to arrive at an appropriate solution and then implement it.

What are your team’s accomplishments this semester and what are the future plans for this project?

This semester we were able to develop the app as well as get some initial tagging of bins done. The app works: Users are able to sign in with their GTID, go to the bins that we have stored in our database and receive points for tagging them. The next step will be to get GPS locations of all the bins on campus (of which there are more than 200) and adhere a code to them, that way students will potentially be able to learn where every bin is on campus.

Was there anything that surprised you while working on this project?

We were surprised to find out how well it worked! We did a large scale user test among the other students in Computing for Good where they were tasked to find all the bins in either the Klaus Advanced Computing Building or Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons, and more than half of the students reported knowing where the bins were after the test was over. This is very much in line with our original goal, so we were all very pleased.